Mobile phones having a camera are proliferating at a rapid pace. Driven through the low cost of cameras, the percentage of camera phones among all mobile phones is rapidly increasing as well. The expectation is that in a few years almost every mobile phone will be equipped with a camera. Voice calls have been made more convenient by addition of hands free capability to mobile phones and other portable devices. These remove the need for the user to hold the phone to the ear.
In future, phones and other portable devices will carry more video call traffic. It will be possible to use a head mounted (e.g. ear or spectacle) camera to create a “see what I see” video or still-picture stream that is transmitted to corresponding communication devices or systems.
However, creating a hands free “see my face” video or still-picture transmission is probably unfeasible as the resulting mounting appendage will be aesthetically undesirable.
The rapidly decreasing costs of cameras paired with an ever increasing quality and miniaturization makes it also possible to incorporate cameras in a wide range of mobile communication devices like PDAs, etc. Said mobile communication devices are usually equipped with communication means comprising wireless LAN interfaces, Bluetooth devices etc., thereby being able to communicate with various other devices within the range of the built-in communication means.
On the other hand, digital cameras (still pictures and video) that are equipped with communication means, like wireless LAN interfaces, Bluetooth devices etc., become more and more popular. Although still called “cameras” these devices have become multi-functional communication devices.
An image-based information retrieval system is disclosed in the published US patent application US 2006/0012677 A1. This image-based information retrieval system includes a mobile telephone and a remote server. The mobile telephone has a built-in camera and a communication link for transmitting an image from the built-in camera to the remote server. The remote server has an optical character recognition engine for generating a first confidence value based on an image from the mobile telephone, an object recognition engine for generating a second confidence value based on an image from the mobile telephone, a face recognition engine for generating a third confidence value based on an image from the mobile telephone, and an integrator module for receiving the first, second, and third confidence values and generating a recognition output.
The known image-based information retrieval system, however, is a very complicated system requiring among other devices a remote server. Communication takes place only between the mobile telephone and the remote server. Further, the known solution is focused on making an image search faster in order to create business models that are particularly suited for a commercial roll-out of an image-based search service. What is more, the known solution does not provide for exchanging video and still-picture streams among portable communication devices.